The U.S. Attorney General was initially a one-person, part-time job. It was established by the Judiciary Act of 1789, but this grew with the bureaucracy. At one time the Attorney General gave legal advice to the U.S. Congress as well as the President, but this Congressional advice-giving had stopped by 1819 on account of the workload involved.[4] To supplement their salaries, which until March 3, 1853, were set by statute at less than the amounts paid to other members of the Cabinet, early Attorneys General, while in office, engaged in extensive private practice of law, often arguing cases before the courts in their private capacities, as attorneys for private (paying) litigants.[5]

Following unsuccessful efforts (in 1830 and 1846) to put the Attorney General's Office on a full-time footing,[6] in 1869, the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, led by Congressman William Lawrence, conducted an inquiry into the creation of a "Law department" headed by the Attorney General and also composed of the various department solicitors and United States attorneys. On February 19, 1868, Lawrence introduced a bill in Congress to create the Department of Justice. This first bill was unsuccessful, however, as Lawrence could not devote enough time to ensure its passage owing to his occupation with the Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.[citation needed]

A second bill was introduced to Congress by Rhode Island Representative Thomas Jenckes on February 25, 1870, and both the Senate and House passed the bill.[citation needed] President Ulysses S. Grant then signed the bill into law on June 22, 1870.[7] The Department of Justice officially began operations on July 1, 1870.[4] Just prior to the Civil War, in February of 1861, the Confederate States of America established a Department of Justice.[8] Though "[t]he second American department of justice was brought into being on July 1, 1870 [, ] fifty years of amendments were required before it reached a status comparable to that of its Confederate predecessor." [9]

The "Act to Establish the Department of Justice" drastically increased the Attorney General's responsibilities to include the supervision of all United States Attorneys, formerly under the Department of the Interior, the prosecution of all federal crimes, and the representation of the United States in all court actions, barring the use of private attorneys by the federal government.[10] The law did create a new office, that of Solicitor General, to supervise and conduct government litigation in the Supreme Court of the United States.[11]

In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order which conveyed, to the Department of Justice, the responsibility for the "functions of prosecuting in the courts of the United States claims and demands by, and offsenses [sic] against, the Government of the United States, and of defending claims and demands against the Government, and of supervising the work of United States attorneys, marshals, and clerks in connection therewith, now exercised by any agency or officer....".[14]

The U.S. Department of Justice building was completed in 1935 from a design by Milton Bennett Medary. Upon Medary's death in 1929, the other partners of his Philadelphia firm Zantzinger, Borie and Medary took over the project. On a lot bordered by Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues and Ninth and Tenth Streets, Northwest, it holds over one million square feet of space. The sculptor C. Paul Jennewein served as overall design consultant for the entire building, contributing more than 50 separate sculptural elements inside and outside.

Various efforts, none entirely successful, have been made to determine the meaning of the Latin motto appearing on the Department of Justice seal, Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur. It is not even known exactly when the original version of the DOJ seal itself was adopted, or when the motto first appeared on the seal. The most authoritative opinion of the DOJ suggests that the motto refers to the Attorney General (and thus, by extension, to the Department of Justice) "who prosecutes on behalf of justice (or the Lady Justice)."[15] The motto's conception of the prosecutor (or government attorney) as being the servant of justice itself finds concrete expression in a similarly-ordered English-language inscription ("THE UNITED STATES WINS ITS POINT WHENEVER JUSTICE IS DONE ITS CITIZENS IN THE COURTS") in the above-door paneling in the ceremonial rotunda anteroom just outside the Attorney General's office in the Department of Justice Main Building in Washington, D.C.[16]

The building was renamed in honor of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 2001. It is sometimes referred to as "Main Justice."[17]

Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) – the Three Prisons Act of 1891 created the federal prison system. Congress created the Federal Bureau of Prisons in 1930 by Pub. L. No. 71–218, 46 Stat. 325, signed into law by President Hoover on May 14, 1930.[31][32][33]

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) – Except for a brief period during Prohibition, ATF's predecessor bureaus were part of the Department of the Treasury for more than two hundred years.[34] ATF was first established by Department of Treasury Order No. 221, effective July 1, 1972; this order "transferred the functions, powers, and duties arising under laws relating to alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives from the Internal Revenue Service to ATF.[35] In 2003, under the terms of the Homeland Security Act, ATF was split into two agencies – the new Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) was transferred to the Department of Justice, while the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) was retained by the Department of the Treasury.[34]

In May 2014, the Department appointed Joseph Klimavicz as CIO.[36] Klimavicz succeeds Kevin Deeley, who served as acting CIO since November 2013 when the previous office holder, Luke McCormack, left to take the CIO post at the Department of Homeland Security.[36]

In 2003, the Department of Justice created LifeAndLiberty.gov, a website that supported the USA PATRIOT Act. It was criticized by government watchdog groups for its alleged violation of U.S. Code Title 18 Section 1913, which forbids money appropriated by Congress to be used to lobby in favor of any law, actual or proposed.[37] The website has since been taken offline.

^Act of February 21, 1861, An Act to organize and establish an Executive Department to be known as the Department of Justice, Prov. C.S. Cong.

^William M. Robinson, Justice in Grey, A History of the Judicial System of the Confederate States of America 38, additionally citing at n.33, Albert Langeluttig, The Department of Justice of the United States 12 (1927), and Arthur J. Dodge, Origin and Development of the Office of the Attorney General, House Doc. 510, 70th Cong., 2d Sess., at 65-78 (U.S. G.P.O., 1929).